Source: Zunia.orgBy D.C.There are increasing signs that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) could bring development instead of destruction. Enthusiasts argue that drones could be used to deliver medicines and vaccines, establish mobile communication networks in the wake of natural disasters, combat wildlife poaching and provide early alerts for emerging conflicts. The charity WWF, for example, plans to make use of 'conservation drones'. "In the first phase, WWF will be testing aerial surveillance technologies equipped with sensors to detect poachers and direct enforcement efforts," says Crawford Allan, WWF's lead on the project. "There are various technologies and WWF will focus on finding the right vehicle with the right sensors that is cost-effective and easily operable by anti-poaching teams," he tells SciDev.Net. This work has been made possible by a US$5 million grant, in December, from Google's Global Impact Awards scheme, which will allow WWF to test advanced but easily replicable technologies in vulnerable sites in Asia and in African wildlife parks. Aerial survey systems will be combined with animal tagging technologies and ranger patrols guided by analytical software to provide surveillance to detect and deter poaching.

Source: AllAfrica.comBy Helge DenkerThe Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) continues to explore innovative ways to protect valuable wildlife. In light of the current threat of commercial poaching facing Namibia, new technology is an area worth exploring and the approach is receiving strong support from the ministry's leadership at all levels. Trials were held at Waterberg Plateau Park from 18 to 22 November to asses a range of high technology tools that can assist in the fight against wildlife crime. Kenneth /Uiseb, MET Deputy Director of Natural Resources Management, responsible for Monitoring, Research and Planning, opened the proceedings. The MET is working with international partners to facilitate the use of the technology. WWF-US, under its Wildlife Crime Technology Project, is channelling funding secured through the Google Global Impact Awards to Namibia in the first field phase of the project. Crawford Allan, director of the international wildlife trade monitoring organisation TRAFFIC North America, is the leader of the WWF project. Allan, who visited Namibia for the trials, pointed out that WWF chose Namibia to test the technology because of the country's excellent track record in rhino conservation. MET staff spent the week working with a small group of experts to test and evaluate a variety of equipment. The international team included two unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) suppliers selected from over 50 international applicants. Wildlife tagging experts flew in from both America and South Africa. Two specialists from a global tactical surveillance and communications company have been working with MET on surveillance technology for some time and where on hand to ensure that all of the new applications can be integrated into an overall surveillance system. The team also included people exploring cost-effective analytical software, which can be used to store and easily access all the data being gathered. A core component of the WWF project is the use of UAVs, and their capabilities where put to the test at Waterberg. Unmanned aerial vehicles are small, remote-controlled aircraft that can be equipped with a variety of surveillance tools such as infrared and high resolution video cameras. The UAVs can be deployed to fly remote patrols during the day or night, and send live video footage to a field operator, or via satellite to a security hub elsewhere. More....

Source: Leedsstudent.orgBy Jack BarrettLast week US officials grabbed headlines after destroying over five tonnes of illegal ivory, seized over the last 25 years since the global ban on ivory trade was implemented in 1989. The stockpile was said to be worth over £6bn and was estimated to have been the equivalent of around 2,000 adult elephants. In 2012 alone over 35,000 elephants were killed for ivory demonstrating the extent of the problem that poaching has become. In the past, much of the demand came from South East Asian countries such as Malaysia and the Philippines for use in ornamental daggers. However, in recent times, much of the blame has fallen to China, Japan and Thailand, with the demand for illegal ivory doubling since 2007. In these countries ivory is used for a number of ceremonial and religious purposes as well as in traditional medicine. Large numbers of people still hold true to ivory’s supposed aphrodisiac properties. Over 40 per cent of illegal ivory is believed to end up in Japan, often passing through Hong Kong. In one arrest last month over 700kg of ivory was seized by Hong Kong customs. Big steps have been made in the effort to tackle the ever-growing problem of ivory poaching. Numerous anti-poaching sections have been introduced into game reserves across Africa as well as funding from organisations such as Google, who in 2012 donated $5 million to the WWF to improve the methods already in place, such as remote aerial survey systems and wildlife tagging technology. On top of this, education programmes have been implemented and punishment for poaching has become more rigorous. However, the incentives for poaching are still vast. A poacher can make $2,000 from a small set of tusks, which is more than they would earn from two to three years of work. Despite best efforts in Africa and the West, we are seeing little to suggest that we are any closer to a solution. With the number of wild elephants now at only 400,000, if poaching continues at the current rate, extinction could be on the horizon within the next 10 years. As we have seen in the US this week, the destroying of large stockpiles of ivory is a symbolic gesture to promote the fight against the illegal ivory trade. But will this gesture reach the countries demanding ivory such as China? Maybe there needs to be more emphasis on targeting the countries buying the ivory rather than those supplying it. Just last year, Yao Ming, a Chinese ex NBA star was involved in the launch of a major public awareness campaign targeting the consumption of ivory and rhino horn in China. This proved successful in a previous campaign where Ming was credited with the reduction of shark fin consumption in China by 50-70 per cent. Shark fin soup was removed from the menu at all state banquets following the campaign. This admirable example raises the question that rather than focusing the majority of efforts on combating ivory poaching at its source; should we be putting more emphasis on targeting the South East Asian market where the demand for ivory is coming from?

Standing in his flatbed truck, Marc Goss touches “take off” on his iPad 3 and a $300 AR Drone whirs into the air as his latest weapon to fight elephant poachers around Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve. “It’s an arms race,” said Goss, whose green khaki clothing shields him from thorny acacia branches in the 30,000 hectares (74,132 acres) of savanna he protects. “We’re seeing larger numbers of poachers.” Besides the almost 2 foot-long drone, Goss and other conservationists are using night-vision goggles and Google Earth to halt the decline of Kenya’s wildlife, which helps attract $1 billion a year in tourism. With elephant ivory sold for as much as $1,000 a kilogram in Hong Kong, Kenya is facing its most serious threat from poaching in almost a quarter of a century, according to the United Nations. At least 232 elephants have been killed in the year to Sept. 30, adding to 384 last year from a population of 40,000. Demand for illicit ivory from expanding economies such as China and Thailand has doubled since 2007, according to the UN Environment Programme. Goss’s patch borders the Maasai Mara National Reserve, where semi-nomadic tribesmen, known as the Maasai, wearing checked-red robes herd their cows. On a warm morning he squints through the bush at a tusk-less elephant carcass surrounded by 10 of its grieving family members in the hills above the village of Aitong. Elephant Face “It’s pretty grim,” Goss, a 28-year-old Kenyan who manages the Mara Elephant Project, said as he stood 50 meters (55 yards) from the carcass. “It’s an elephant without a face. It’ll be eaten by Hyenas now.” More....

There will never be enough enforcement to monitor the world's wilderness effectively in person, but now you can help out a little from the comfort of home.

Driven by newly affluent markets in China and the Middle East, the illegal wildlife trade is booming to unprecedented levels. Rhinos have been killed in ever larger numbers--388 in 2012, triple the rate just three years ago--and elephants have endured their worst years of poaching since the 1980s. There will never be enough rangers or park guards. So conservationists are turning to technology: wildlife cameras streaming images to the world via satellite. Anyone with a smartphone can now monitor images of unsuspecting wildlife--and poachers--in Africa as part of the Instant Wild project. The Zoological Society of London (ZSL), backed by a $500,000 Global Impact Award from Google, is rolling out the project to deploy the new generation of park rangers, which are a series of sensitive remote cameras connected to the Internet via satellite.A handful of the cameras are already in Africa positioned close to watering holes and other wildlife hotspots. Capable of snapping up to 30 photos a day, the cameras transmit images back to park rangers within minutes and sensors detect vehicle vibrations and the sound of gunshots (triangulating the location of suspected poachers). The flash is infrared so that the animals (and the poachers) won't know they're being watched. The original version of the system used a basic cellular connection. But because only a few places enjoyed such connectivity in the world, the cameras are now outfitted with satellite connections, which allow them to stream data and respond to remotely operated settings.

As a company, Google has a pretty green reputation, funding green energy efforts around the world. But surprisingly, the Iternet giant is not completely ethically and green conscious, as it still traffics ivory products through its various retailers and vendors. The organization Sum of Us is making a plea to Google to get the blood off their hands and stop trafficking ivory immediately, which you can join by signing this petition.

Despite Google’s official policy of against selling products made from endangered animals, many ivory items still pop up from their associated retailers around the world. These retailers sneak through to Google customers due to lenient enforcement by Google policies, which make illegal ivory available to virtually anyone who knows how to search for it, or pop up as Google ads. The black market ivory trade has left hundreds of elephants slaughtered or orphaned across Africa and India, as poachers hunt their valuable tusks. In fact, the population of African forest elephants has dropped a whopping 62 percent in the last 10 years alone, fueled by the lust for illegal ivory. Ivory retailers are not only searchable, but appear as Google shops and also as Google sense ads. The company says that they remove ivory ads when detected, but the monitoring system is lax. SumofUs hopes that this petition will help Google make completely banning and regulating ivory retailers and ads a priority for the company.

The Instant Wild project, designed for the Zoological Society of London by Cambridge Consultants, started out as a quest to use motion-activated cameras to find rare animals in Kenya. But the project's creators quickly realized that the same technology could be used to photograph poachers in the act. How the system works: Cameras take pictures when their motion sensors detect movement. Then these cameras transmit those pictures back to a central transmission unit, which may be hidden in the bush or a tree, and which contains a Raspberry Pi computer with a satellite uplink and a wireless receiver. That central unit then compresses the pictures and transmits them over the Iridium satellite network to the London Zoological Society servers. The pictures go to subscribers of the free "Instant Wild" app (anyone interested in gawking at rare animals, really). This allows users to look at animals more or less in real time, with a press of the finger. There's even a field guide built into the app to help users identify animals, turning the whole thing into a game of sorts.Here's how it becomes an anti-poaching technology: humans count among the animals that can be recorded and identified--bad news for poachers. Cambridge Consultants and the Zoological Society of London are now providing that data to the Kenya Wildlife Service, which battles local poaching. So far, no poachers have been caught, but that's probably due to the newness of the system, which just completed trials in Kenya. Cambridge Consultants say there are plans to expand it by 100 more units this year and 250 more next year. More....

Two environmental groups on Tuesday announced their deep disappointment over Softbank Corporation’s continued advertisements of endangered animal products on Yahoo! Japan. In a joint statement, London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Washington DC-based Humane Society International (HSI) revealed how the Japanese firm allegedly refused their appeal for Yahoo! Japan to stop the sale of elephant ivory and whale and dolphin goods on its website. Softbank is the majority stockholder in Yahoo! Japan, a local version of the popular search engine and online information portal. Softbank’s internet business unit earned US$4 billion in revenues in 2012, EIA and HSI reported. According to the World Wildlife Fund, another non-government organisation, “It is almost impossible to obtain reliable figures for the value of illegal wildlife trade.” They added that the trafficking of animal parts is similar to the illegal trade of drugs and weapons. Just recently, various media reported that $5 million worth of illegal ivory and leopard skins were discovered in Hong Kong, the second bust in a series of ivory seizures in a month. Despite the international trade ban in ivory, Yahoo! Japan has a list of nearly 8,000 ads for elephant ivory. This is three times the amount of advertisements in March, when similar websites Amazon and Google started to impose a ban on the marketing of elephant ivory and whale products. More....

As the international financial community implements electronic regulatory measures to identify and stymie terror financing, a funding source for African terrorism has emerged that is far less detectable by computerized systems: elephant and rhino poaching. Armed rebel groups and government militias have cashed into the lucrative profits ivory yields in worldwide markets, particularly in Asia. Although the 1989 Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species prohibits the ivory trade, the poaching of elephants and rhinos in Africa funds international terrorism and risks driving the animals to extinction. According to the World Wildlife Fund, poachers kill an estimated 30,000 elephants every year for their ivory tusks. Armed poachers encircle and shoot animals from helicopters as forces on the ground approach to cut off the ivory and leave the carcasses to rot. Much of the activity occurs in Central Africa, where regions such as Congo’s Garamba National Park are home to concentrated elephant populations. African governments, often battling corruption and lacking strong local infrastructure, have struggled to combat the practice. In some countries, such as Congo and Uganda, government armies themselves perpetrate poaching activities. In addition to government militias, African rebel groups are also frequent poachers, using the profits to acquire weapons and ammunition. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), notorious for abducting children, raping women, and pillaging communities, uses poaching profits to support warlord Joseph Kony. Darfur’s Janjaweed and Somalia’s Al-Shabaab, the latter of which is a branch of Al-Qaeda, also conduct some of the most active rebel poaching activity. These groups have contributed to genocide, violence, and instability within Africa, as well as support for terrorism beyond the continent. More....

African countries and private game reserves are engaging in an increasingly sophisticated arms race against poachers, yet the slaughter of elephants and rhinos continues. Some experts argue that the battle must be joined on a far wider front that targets demand in Asia and judicial dysfunction in Africa.

Every two weeks or so, the South African Department of Environmental Affairs publishes a rhino poaching update, a running tally of rhinoceroses illegally killed for lucrative Asian black markets, along with a summary of arrests of poachers and rhino horn couriers. The latest, dated August 7, lists 553 rhinos poached so far this year and 147 arrests. South Africa is on track to lose 900 to 1,000 rhinos to poachers in 2013, smashing last year’s macabre record of 668. The epidemic of rhino poaching that broke out in 2008 shows no sign of dying down.

Africa’s elephants are also being shot in extraordinary and rising numbers for their ivory, now a hot-selling status and investment commodity in China. Experts estimate that a mind-boggling 25,000 to 40,000 elephants are being killed annually across the continent, which could be close to 10 percent of the total number remaining, and significantly more than are born each year.

Rhino and elephant protectors have sprung into action in an increasingly militarized effort to stamp out this carnage. Governments have given game rangers better weapons, engaged intelligence analysts, and put spotter planes, helicopters, and unmanned drones into the air. Some have deployed their national defense forces into national parks. Private wildlife custodians have spent millions on their own armed anti-poaching guards, sniffer dogs, mini-drones, and informants.

But as the response to rhino and elephant poaching has become progressively more militarized, a stubborn reality remains: The continental-scale slaughter of rhinos and elephants continues to intensify, despite rising arrests and killings of poachers and increasing interdiction of illegal shipments of rhino horn and ivory. And although the toll would no doubt be worse without the anti-poaching efforts, experts say that other aspects of the battle to save Africa’s wildlife — including improving justice systems and launching efforts to reduce consumer demand for wildlife products — have been given short shrift. More....

With experts projecting a decline in diamond mining and sales over the next decade, Botswana's 'new gem' is the eco-tourism sector which made P8 billion last year. But the sector is grappling with a threat that won't go away - poachers armed to the teeth. In this two-part interview, Staff Writer GOTHATAONE MOENG reports on the journey with World Wildlife Fund senior programme officer for African Species Conservation Matthew Lewis about how military technologies and community participation in conservation are the way forward. Lewis was in Botswana as a guest of the American Embassy where he spoke about the economic value of wildlife conservation

MMEGI: One of the issues that has consistently come up during your talks here in Kasane has been the rise in poaching worldwide, the Southern African region included. You have also talked about the need for the use of more sophisticated methods against poaching. Can you tell me about these new methods that countries should be looking into?

LEWIS: One of the projects that the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is implementing is a project funded by Google Impact Award and it is investigating appropriate technology that can help anti-poaching efforts. Primarily, we are looking at technologies like Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, small remote-controlled airplanes that have sensors on them that can help rangers detect poachers in the bush. And so what we are looking at is a range of technologies that are out there that can either give an edge to the rangers because what they are facing out there are poachers who are more and more sophisticated. Especially what we have seen in South Africa is that the poaching of rhinos has become a really sophisticated crime. It has involved people in some cases using night vision goggles to poach rhinos at night. In some cases they are using helicopters. So the sophistication of poachers has meant that rangers need to respond with their own level of sophistication, it is no longer enough to do things the way they have been done in the last 50 or 60 years where it's just guys on patrol with very basic equipment. We need to look at all the technologies available that can give them an edge - things like night vision technology, unmanned aerial vehicle and small remote-controlled airplanes and infra-red cameras that can see at night. More....

Tanzania’s storied wildlife reserves could soon get a watchful, winged inhabitant: U.S. drones.On his visit to the East African nation last month, President Obama discussed the possibility of using unarmed, unmanned aircraft to help overstretched park rangers combat the growing problem of elephant poaching in Tanzania’s vast wildlife reserves and national parks, Tanzanian Ambassador to the United States Liberata Mulamula told editors and reporters at The Washington Times this week.Wildlife groups estimate that 10,000 to 25,000 elephants are killed in Tanzania each year for their ivory tusks and the number of elephants in southern Tanzania has fallen by more than half. Much of the ivory is shipped illegally to Asian markets.“The extent of poaching is very, very, very high,” John Salehe, director of the African Wildlife Foundation’s Maasai Steppe, said in a phone interview from Tanzania.There has been sharp increase in elephant poaching over the past year, he said. Tanzanian officials say the area that needs to be monitored is vast with too few rangers.“There is trafficking, but also there is criminality, so we are fighting both,” said Mrs. Mulamula. “If we can work together, we can put an end to this.”That is where drones could play a crucial role.“The American administration is ready to put up funds to help us in areas where we think we can be able to work together and put an end to this trafficking and killings,” Mrs. Mulamula said. More....

Kenya's Ol Pejeta wildlife conservancy, which shelters four of the world's seven remaining northern white rhinos, is nearly ready to launch its first anti-poaching drone, thanks to a successful Indiegogo campaign.The campaign launched earlier this year and reached its target of $35,000 (£28,000), which has funded half of the $70,000 (£45,600) cost of the drone. The unmanned aircraft has been adapted especially for conservation purposes by American company Unmanned Innovation to be able to read the RFID tags that are attached to many of the endangered animals in the conservancy.According to Ol Pejeta's commercial director Rob Breare it was important to make sure the drone was "designed for conservation and not just an off-the-shelf ex-military solution. This allows us to tailor the user interface to our needs and to easily integrate other sensors such as RFID."The drone will benefit the conservancy in three ways, says Breare. Firstly it will serve as a deterrent to poachers, secondly it will be able to observe and confirm the safety of certain animals using thermal imaging cameras and finally it will be able to track the movements of key animals using radio frequency.The main problem Ol Pejeta faces is "trying to keep track of endangered species across 36,420 hectares of wilderness and with only a relative handful of rangers," according to Breare. Ol Pejeta has 120 rangers working across an area six times the size of Manhattan. More....

Congratulations to Etsy for stepping up to the plate in prohibiting the sale of ivory and all other products made from endangered species. By reconsidering its wildlife policies, Etsy joins eBay as a leader in saving wildlife on the web. eBay voluntarily banned all animal ivory from its sites globally in 2008 after the release of the IFAW investigative report, Killing with Keystrokes. Now other web platforms like Craigslist, Bonanza and Google Shop should follow suit and do the same. Just last week on these three sites IFAW found ivory, live parrots and tortoises, monkey bone, and even rhino horn, all available for sale. We hope that these websites will follow the example of Etsy and eBay and move quickly to put an end to the illicit wildlife trade occurring on-line.

As poaching incidents continue to rise, conservationists look to smart technologies to save the planet's wildlife.

Adam Rosman spent much of March in the Hluhluwe Imfolozi Park, in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). Unlike a conventional tourist, Rosman wasn't searching for the big five from the back of a game-viewing vehicle – he was scouting for poachers using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones.

The aeronautical engineer works for Shaya Technologies, which was tasked by the park to assist in its efforts to curb rhino poaching. The IT security company, owned by Ian Melamed, opted to do so from above.

"The point of the whole UAV move was to trial the use of drones as an anti-rhino poaching tool," says Rosman, adding that the focus on KZN wildlife is fitting, as the area has the largest collection of rhino in the country. Shaya Technologies' anti-poaching drones make use of small airplanes with some form of monitoring system on board. He describes them as "flying CCTV cameras".

“We face an unprecedented poaching crisis. Killings are way up. We need solutions that are as sophisticated as the threats we face,” says Carter Roberts, president and CEO of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Roberts notes this increased poaching threat means conservationists have to push the envelope in the fight against wildlife crime.

Eye in the sky

The fact that the R618, a public road, runs through the middle of the park, with no fences limiting its use, is one of the main concerns at Hluhluwe. Rangers have often found that poachers would drive along the road, shoot a rhino, hack off its horn, and then hop in their cars and leave, says Rosman. More....

A crowd of wildlife rangers gathered on a woody hillside in Nepal last year to try something they'd never done before. A man held what looked like an overgrown toy airplane in his right hand, arm cocked as if to throw it into the sky. As his fellow rangers cheered, he did just that. A propeller took over, sending it skyward. The craft was an unmanned aerial vehicle, also known as a drone, though not the military kind. Its wingspan was about 7 feet, and it carried only a video camera that filmed the forest below. The flight was a test run sponsored and videotaped by the World Wildlife Fund. "It's a cat-and-mouse game when it comes to getting ahead of poachers," explains Matt Lewis, a WWF wildlife biologist who helped set up the test. Lewis says poachers are getting more sophisticated. "When poachers are starting to use night vision technology, and when poachers are starting to use tranquilizer drugs to silently dart an animal and cut off its horns at night and get out at night ... it's incumbent upon us to find a better solution to address that." Black-market prices for elephant ivory and rhinoceros horn have reached record highs, and that's pushed wildlife poaching to a fever pitch. In turn, conservationists and governments that profit from wildlife tourism are reaching for a high-tech tool to stop the killing: the drone. Lewis says drones could tip the odds back in favor of the rangers. So the World Wildlife Fund is testing simple, inexpensive versions of these aerial vehicles in Nepal and Namibia using a $5 million grant from Google. More....

A number of celebrities stormed social media recently to help the Zoological Society of London win £500,000 Google Global Impact Award as ‘fan favourite’

Famous faces including actor Leonardo DiCaprio, adventurer Ben Fogle and TV presenter Dermot O'Leary all backed the Zoological Society of London’s (ZSL) campaign to win a £500,000 grant from Google to help stop rhino poaching in Africa. Twenty five celebrities lent their support to the project, which will use the grant to install a network of next-generation cameras across Tsavo National Park in Kenya to help stop gangs of armed-poachers killing thousands of rhino every year. The influential VIPs helped ZSL spread their message by sending all-important tweets to their followers – totalling more than 20 million people. Their support helped ZSL gain the most public votes and see off tough competition to become the “fan favourite” and win the incredible grant. This crucial funding will see cameras with automated sensors installed in poaching hotspots within months – saving hundreds of animals over the next two years. As well as instantly transmitting images of intruders the cameras can detect vehicles from vibrations and triangulate the sound of gunshots, so that park rangers can pinpoint the location of poachers and intervene immediately. ZSL’s director of fundraising, James Wren, says: “It’s fantastic to have won this important Google grant, and we couldn’t have done it without the overwhelming support from our VIP friends and the public. These life-saving cameras will help stop the slaughter of rhinos, elephants, and more, before it’s too late.” Other stars who joined the campaign included Edward Norton, Derren Brown, Gail Porter, Blink-182's Mark Hoppus, Bill Bailey and many more.

"Please, I would like to ask all those who have positions of responsibility in economic, political and social life, and all men and women of goodwill: let us be protectors of creation, protectors of God's plan inscribed in nature, protectors of one another and of the environment. Let us not allow omens of destruction and death to accompany the advance of this world!" - Pope Francis, March 19 Destruction and Death, as Pope Francis offered this homily in St. Peter's Square, had just left the scene in the central African nation of Chad, where in a single night in mid-March 89 elephants were slaughtered for their tusks. Reports described the ivory poachers as 50 or so men on camel and horseback, speaking Arabic, armed with AK-47s, and presumed to be the same band that came over from Sudan last year to execute more than 450 elephants in Cameroon -- on that foray, dispatching their victims with rocket-propelled grenades. Unless Western and African nations can turn things around fast, in order to protect the 400,000 or so left, then the elephants of Africa, pretty much all of them, will soon be gone. In Chad, near the Cameroon border to the south, they left their mark by sparing not even the 33 pregnant females and 15 elephant calves, and by hacking off the tusks while some of the creatures were still alive. There were four park rangers on duty that night, short a fifth guard who was murdered by poachers last year. But they were far away at the time, and, in any case, would have been helpless against overwhelming force. Among other problems, the elephant preserve is about 850 square miles, a big stretch of creation for just four guys to protect. More....

The fight against rhino and elephant poachers in the Tsavo has received a boost in the form of a Sh70 million grant to deploy state-of-the-art camera traps in the vast conservancy. This was after conservationists from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) won the grant from Google’s Global Impact Awards to install a network of next generation cameras to help stop rhinos being slaughtered by gangs of armed poachers. The crucial funding will see cameras with automated sensors installed in poaching hotspots within months – saving hundreds of animals over the next two years. As well as instantly transmitting images of park intruders to the rangers, the cameras can detect vehicles from vibrations and triangulate the sound of gunshots, so that park rangers can pinpoint the location of poachers and intervene immediately. A public surge of support for the project saw huge numbers of people vote online for ZSL to receive this critical funding ahead of nine other finalists. “These life-saving cameras will help stop the slaughter of rhinos, which has seen more than 1,000 killed in Africa in just eighteen months,” ZSL’s field conservation director, Prof Jonathan Baillie, said. Kenya Wildlife Service Director, William Kiprono, said the award was a milestone in the protection of critically endangered species in large areas such as Tsavo which are more difficult to manage.

“We appreciate the continued partnership and collaboration with the Zoological Society of London which we have had for more than 20 years in veterinary services, species and ecological monitoring.” More....

A project created by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) that uses Raspberry Pi computers to curb the illegal poaching of rhinos in Kenya has been rewarded with a £500,000 prize from Google. The Global IT Challenge aims to award innovative uses of technology that "tackle some of the world's biggest challenges" with three top prizes selected by a panel of judges including Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Richard Branson, and a fourth prize designated the "people's choice".The public vote awarded the efforts of the ZSL with £500,000 to deploy camera traps in Tsavo National Park, Kenya.The cameras, which are powered by Raspberry Pi computers, use automated sensors to transmit images of intruders in the park and triangulate the sounds of gunshots. These features will allow park-rangers to quickly pinpoint poachers' locations and intervene immediately.In Africa one rhino is killed every 11 hours, with poachers answering soaring demands for the animal's horn, which is prized for alleged medicinal properties.ZSL's field conservation director, Professor Jonathan Baillie, says: "These life-saving cameras will help stop the slaughter of rhinos, which has seen more than 1,000 killed in Africa in just eighteen months. More....

Coveted for its supposed medicinal benefits or as a status symbol for the rich and eccentric, rhino horns are in huge demand again, a trend that conservationists fear could wipe out the most vulnerable rhino species in a matter of years. In Asia, where demand is strongest, the Javan rhino was declared extinct in Vietnam in 2011, and two others Asian species are critically endangered. Now, with the street price of rhino horn around $65,000 per kilogram, poachers have turned to African rhinos.“It started about four years ago, when we had about 10 to 15 rhinos killed. The next year it went up to 250. Last year it was over 660. The numbers just keep escalating,” says Michael Grover, a wildlife conservationist at South Africa’s Sabi Sand Game Reserve. According to South Africa’s Department of Environmental Affairs, there were 273 rhino poaching incidents reported through April 30.Grover’s small team of conservationists and security officers patrol an area 80 times larger than New York’s Central Park, and to fight poachers, they needed a more intelligent plan of attack. Grover wanted to know where and when the break-ins were occurring, how the rhinos were being attacked, and who might be behind the killings. “I went on to Google one day,” Grover recalls, “and typed in ‘how to make a BlackBerry app.’ That’s when I found the guys at Canvas.”Canvas Solutions, a Reston (Va.) software developer that pushes companies to ditch paper in favor of digital sharing, wasn’t an obvious choice. London 2012 organizers used Canvas to manage certain inventory and security matters during the Summer Olympic Games, and an aircraft fueling company uses it for crane inspections. “A lot of NGOs use us too,” says Canvas co-founder and Chief Executive James Quigley. For example, medical researchers used Canvas to record from the field patient details during a suspected outbreak of avian flu in Madagascar in 2008. More....

What do gold, platinum and rhino horn have in common? They are among the most expensive materials in the world – with rhino horn being the leader of this group. In late 2011, according to National Geographic Magazine, its Vietnam street price was between $33 and $133 per gram. In South Africa, it currently costs around $65 per gram – this is three times as much as a whole South African white rhino. No wonder rhino horn poaching is continuously increasing, with 333 poached South African rhino in 2010, 448 in 2011 and a total of 668 in 2012. The South African government’s latest statistics show that alone this year until March 15, 158 white rhinos have already been poached. This high demand for rhino horns does not come out of the blue: In many Asian countries, especially in Vietnam, rhino horn powder is used to cure diseases like cancer or used to treat hangovers, improve concentration, and also as an aphrodisiac. However, there is absolutely no scientific evidence this actually works. According to the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC, more than 50% of Asians caught in South Africa in 2012 were Vietnamese citizens. As a matter of fact, there even exists a You tube video from 2008 where Vietnamese diplomat Vu Moc Anh accepts a poached rhino horn delivered right to the Vietnamese embassy in South Africa. In order to prevent poaching preemptively, the Rhino Rescue Project (RRP) was born. Its founders Ed and Lorinda Hern of the Rhino & Lion Nature Reserve in Krugersdorp developed together with veterinarian Charles van Niekerk a device that injects red dye into rhino horns. Yes, it is exactly the kind of indelible dye that is used for ruining bank robbers’ prey and tagging the thieves. RRP’s spokeswoman Lorinda Hern didn’t want to share the exact name of the product due to security reasons, but it is known that it works similar as industry products like Disperse Red 9, which also goes under the name of 1-methylamino anthraquinone. More....

India said Monday it is deploying drones over a reserve to safeguard the rare one-horned rhino from poachers, the first time the country has employed aerial technology to protect wildlife.The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) gives patrols a new strategic advantage with an eye in the sky, allowing access into previously unreachable areas and a safe view of illegal activities on the ground."This is the first time in India that the UAV technology is being used for protecting the wildlife," Assam forest minister Rockybul Hussain told reporters in the state's main city of Guwahati."The presence of the UAVs will also serve as a deterrent to poachers since they now know the parks are being monitored both on the ground and from above."The drones are being flown over the Kaziranga National Park, some 200 kilometres (120 miles) from Guwahati, in the northeast of the country, park officials said.The UAVs are light enough to be launched by hand, taking images of the ground below with a still or video camera."They can fly a pre-programmed route at a maximum elevation of 200 meters (yards) for up to 90 minutes. The battery can be recharged as and when required," K. Ramesh, co-ordinator of the Wildlife Institute of India, told AFP.Kaziranga has been fighting a long battle against rhino poachers who kill the animals for their horns, which fetch huge prices in some Asian countries.The main market for the horn is China where it is used for making medicine and jewellery while in Vietnam many believe it has cancer-curing and aphrodisiac qualities.At least 21 rhinos were killed last year by poachers in Kaziranga while another 15 have been reported dead this year.A 2012 census in the park put the number of the rhinos at 2,290 out of a global one-horned rhinoceros population of 3,300. More....

Conservationists battling illicit global trade in endangered species say at least 25,000 African elephants were slaughtered last year by criminal gangs eager to market the lucrative ivory from their tusks. The poachers' take has risen to alarming levels over the last six years, with about one in 17 wild elephants being felled in 2012, by some estimates. That is a pace that confronts some herds with extinction as elephant births are again being outpaced by the illegal kills. Protecting Africa’s majestic mammals from the scourge of tusk hunters was a task conservationists thought they had mastered two decades ago after the 178 nations of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES, banned crossborder ivory trade in 1989. But legal ivory-carving industries in Thailand and China have provided convenient cover for rogue traders, and the Internet’s anonymity and 24/7 availability allow buyers and sellers to conduct business in banned species parts without fear of detection or social reproach. Even worse, say wildlife defenders, is the false confidence the international trade ban has engendered among consumers everywhere that any statues or baubles openly for sale must have been made from legally available tusks of domesticated elephants that died of natural causes. Thailand Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra welcomed more than 2,000 conservation and wildlife advocates to a global meeting of CITES in Bangkok last week with a pledge to close the legal gaps that have made Thailand one of the biggest markets for “blood ivory.” The other flourishing market, China, has brought its laws up to international standards, but they are often ignored by unscrupulous dealers who substitute smuggled ivory items for documented domestic works. “So many consumers just proceed on the assumption that no animal was killed for this product. The bloody killing fields are continents away from the Chinese consuming market, and there is very little consideration for what is going on there,” Tom Milliken, head of the elephant and rhinoceros program at the wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic, said in a telephone interview from the Bangkok conference. Thailand provides a convenient fig leaf to cover the illicit trade with laws that allow marketing of tusks taken from elephants that die after service in the logging and tourist industries. Even calculating a more accelerated natural death rate among the 1,000 or so captive tusk-growing males, a fully legal ivory trade would provide Thailand's registered carvers with less than 2,000 pounds of ivory per year, or about 25 pounds apiece. “There is no way an ivory carver could have a livelihood with that volume,” Milliken said. More....

Conservationists say there's a new threat to the survival of Africa's endangered elephants that may be just as deadly as poachers' bullets: the black-market trade of ivory in cyberspace. Illegal tusks are being bought and sold on countless Internet forums and shopping websites worldwide, including Internet giant Google, with increasing frequency, according to activists. And wildlife groups attending the 178-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in Bangkok this week are calling on global law enforcement agencies to do something about it. The elephant slaughter, which has reached crisis proportions unheard of in two decades, is largely being driven by skyrocketing demand in Asia, where tusks are often carved into tourist trinkets and ornaments. "The Internet is anonymous, it's open 24 hours a day for business, and selling illegal ivory online is a low-risk, high-profit activity for criminals," Tania McCrea-Steele of the International Fund for Animal Welfare told The Associated Press on Tuesday from London. In one investigation last year, IFAW found 17,847 elephant products listed on 13 websites in China. The country, which conservationists call the world's top destination for "blood ivory" from Africa, is not alone. IFAW says illegal ivory trading online is an issue within the U.S., including on eBay, and it is rife on some websites in Europe, particularly nations with colonial links to Africa. It is often advertised with code words like "ox-bone," ''white gold," ''unburnable bone," or "cold to the touch," and shipped through the mail. Another conservation advocacy group, the Environmental Investigation Agency, said Tuesday that Google Japan's shopping site now has 10,000 ads promoting ivory sales. About 80 percent of the ads are for "hanko," small wooden stamps inlaid with ivory lettering that are widely used in Japan to affix signature seals to official documents; the rest are carvings and other small objects.The trade is legal within Japan, but banned by Google's own policies. The EIA said hanko sales are a "major demand driver for elephant ivory." More....